How to Fix a Broken Heart

It is easy to get lost in the hospital. From the main artery grow several asymmetrical wings rising to varying heights. When one of the two main artery elevators opens, the landing pad presents an unexpected reception area, depending onto which floor you alight.

I had thought room 3217 afforded a view of the Hope and Healing Garden, but over the week, as I wandered about on visit breaks, I realized it wasn’t the garden I had seen on the hospital floor-map, but just a breezeway between wings, an alley, really, of a horizontal line of maple trees rising vertically above a trapezoidal space created by three wings. One of the nurses said that when she started at the hospital, those trees were only a few feet tall. I was reminded of the William Carlos Williams poem,

Between Walls

the back wings
of the

hospital where
nothing

will grow lie
cinders

in which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle

Williams found hope and healing where he could, and here between walls grow beds of dark green, glossy ivy, out of which grow the spindly maples.

On another walk, taking another breath break, I discovered the Meditation Garden, an open air courtyard enclosed by hospital walls. The Meditation Garden was quiet and relaxing, with a variety of benches and tables for sitting and if lucky, meditation. But I thought of the little book “How to Relax,” by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Meditation is not what you might think; it’s more about what you don’t think. And, Hanh says, you don’t need a special garden, mat, or incense to meditate. You just need to relax, and breathe. I get that, but still, the Meditation Garden is a good hospital getaway space.

There were other places to chill out: outside on the grounds; the cafeteria; the Pavilion lobby was very pleasant; the LivingWell Bistro; the chapel. I liked the chapel, but was a bit put off by the giant mural of a long, blond hair and blue eyed Jesus. Susan has blue eyes, and her hair was once beach blond. I think Jesus’s hair must surely be grey by now, if he hasn’t pulled it all out.

Another day, I found the Hope and Healing Garden, but I couldn’t get in. I saw a tree growing over a circular brick wall, and I tried to find a way into the garden, which I could just barely see through a door window across an aisle and though another door window.

As I was writing that last sentence, in my pocket notebook, sitting comfortably in the digs of a spiffy waiting room lobby area outside the vegan LivingWell Bistro, an immense amount of new and fascinating technology was wandering Wi-Fi-like through and around patients, taking blood, artery, vein, and heart pictures. I had a glimpse of the imaging room from the hall just before I came out to sit here to wait: clean and sparkly, the four imaging technicians in starched blue scrubs, and the cardiologist, an ancient oracle, about to reveal obscure things that live behind screens.

On a slide show screen on the wall in the lobby, across from the waiting area couches, I could see photos of the Hope and Healing Garden, and reading the slides, discovered the garden has limited access. It’s for mental health patients.

I’ve been waiting almost two hours now. The oracle should be coming through the big set of automatic doors soon.

It’s hard to fix something that is a work in progress. The heart is a jalopy, constantly under repair; a fishing barge rising and falling with the tides, taking on water; a yo-yo with a broken string, a bicycle with a jumped chain, a stew of recycled images.

The gods make contact with the humans through the oracles. The people want miracles, but the gods grow jealous of the oracles and humans and make mistakes. What a strange way for a god to behave.

The modern god likes to hide. Like Tolstoy said, he sees and knows but waits, while humans, as Gertrude Stein remarked, inside, are always the same age. But I’m not sure about that. As Cornel West said, time is real, and we can’t break-dance at 70 like we could at 17. Or surf. But Isaiah said:

He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (40 KJV)

And they shall be reborn and breathe again? Where is this Lord when you need him? Surely he must at least be weary of request after request after request. What else do people give him but requests? To fix your heart, he says, call a plumber. He gives you what you need, never what you want.